AI writing tools differ less in the prose they produce than in what they meter and who they are built for.
This guide ranks thirteen on the cost of the first ninety days, what the bill becomes with extra seats or credits, how drafts leave the product, whether one vendor stands behind it, and who it suits.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What AI writing tools software does
AI writing tools use language models to draft, rewrite, check or extend text inside an editor, covering grammar correction, paraphrasing, marketing copy, academic prose and long-form fiction.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each AI writing tool is built for. One rule sits on top of those tests:
Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Free plan; Pro per month, published; Enterprise quoted
Yes
Employees and students who want corrections inside every app they type in
Teams wanting marketing copy planned and generated at volume
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Self-funded grammar and style editor with a free plan and lifetime licence
Ranked #1 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
The pricing page offers a free plan, a Premium plan, a higher Premium Pro plan and, on a separate toggle, a lifetime purchase. That range is unusual here, and lets a buyer cap the cost of ownership at a known figure.
The free plan is useful but limited per day. Premium removes the limits on rephrases and line-editing runs; Premium Pro adds live workshops and higher daily quotas on story tools. Its value lies in revision.
What stands out
Free tier
Lifetime option
Independent
Where it costs you
The free plan is capped per day, with 10 rephrases and 2 runs of each report.
Generation is secondary: the product edits and critiques text more than it drafts new text.
Right for
Writers who revise their own drafts and want a lifetime licence option
Wrong for
Teams that need first drafts generated at volume
United KingdomFree plan; monthly, yearly or lifetime, published
Fiction planning workspace where you bring your own AI model key
Ranked #2 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
The Codex stores characters, locations and their progressions, so a long manuscript keeps its facts straight, and the AI drafts from scene beats against that record. The pricing page unlocks every feature in a 21-day trial without a card.
After that, Scribe has no AI, Hobbyist adds bring-your-own-key AI, Artisan adds chat features and Specialist adds team writing. Because you hold the model key, your costs track your usage, and the tool is narrow by design.
What stands out
Fiction
Bring your own key
Story bible
Where it costs you
The lowest plan contains no AI features, and AI requires the next plan up.
AI usage is paid to the model provider through your own key, so the real monthly cost has a second part.
Right for
Novelists and series writers who want control over which model they use
Short-form copy generator with a low-priced unlimited plan
Ranked #3 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Rytr is organised around use cases: pick an email, SEO meta title, reply or caption, set a tone, and it generates variants. The Unlimited plan removes the monthly character cap, and Premium adds multiple tone matches, more plagiarism checks and 35 or more languages.
A 'My Voice' feature and an API exist. The trade-off is depth. Nothing here plans a content calendar or enforces a style guide across a team.
What stands out
Free tier
Short-form copy
Plagiarism checks
Where it costs you
Free and Unlimited plans generate in one language; 35+ languages need Premium.
Output is aimed at short snippets, and there is no editorial workflow for a team.
Right for
Freelancers and small shops producing captions, emails and meta text cheaply
Wrong for
Agencies that need approvals, shared brand rules and many seats
United StatesFree plan; monthly or yearly plans, published
Fiction drafting assistant that meters work in monthly credits
Ranked #4 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Published pricingElsewhere
Sudowrite offers Write, Rewrite, Describe and Expand actions, a chat for brainstorming, style matching and series continuity, with Muse and Ballad as its fiction-only models next to a set of third-party models.
Plans differ mainly by credit allowance, and developmental edits and beta reads arrive on the higher tiers. The vendor says it does not train its own or OpenAI's models on your writing. The weak spot is the credit meter: output length decides how fast it drains.
What stands out
Fiction
Credit meter
Style matching
Where it costs you
Terms state that fees are not refunded on cancellation.
Every action draws on a credit allowance, so heavy drafting can exhaust a plan early.
Right for
Fiction authors who want drafting help matched to their own style
Wrong for
Anyone needing a stated legal entity before buying
Not stated by the vendorCredit-based monthly plans, published; trial without card
Book and screenplay generator priced by AI credit allowance
Ranked #5 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Squibler sells whole-manuscript generation: the vendor says Plus produces a full 200-300 page book with characters, plot and structure kept consistent, and edits the whole manuscript with AI. Export to PDF and DOCX is part of Plus.
The free tier tests the idea with 1,000 credits. Pro removes the credit cap for people producing many books. The hazard is uniformity: output built from one prompt tends to need heavy revision before it reads as authored.
What stands out
Free tier
Long-form
Screenplays
Where it costs you
Free plan is limited to 1,000 AI credits per month.
The Plus plan has a credit allowance, so only the top plan removes the meter.
Right for
Self-publishers wanting a full first draft or screenplay generated quickly
Wrong for
Authors who want AI to assist rather than write the book
United StatesFree plan; monthly or annual credit plans, published
Marketing copy tool that scores drafts with performance predictions
Ranked #6 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Starter and Data-Driven plans are published, each with a 7-day trial; Data-Driven raises predictions and seats to three and adds real-time predictions for manual edits. Business adds custom-built models trained on your past campaigns, upload of up to 5,000 performance rows and website messaging tests.
Enterprise adds a private language model, SSO and full API access. The point is choosing between variants with evidence, so a team without campaign history gets less from it.
What stands out
Performance scoring
Brand voice
Quoted tiers
Where it costs you
Predictions are capped per plan, and Starter includes one seat and one brand voice.
Custom-built models and API access sit in the quoted Business and Enterprise tiers.
Right for
Performance marketers testing ad and email variants against predicted scores
Wrong for
Writers who need long-form articles or fiction drafts
United StatesPer month by plan, published; 7-day trial; Business and Enterprise quoted
Research-paper writing assistant with citations and PDF uploads
Ranked #7 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Jenni pairs a document editor with a PDF library, so suggestions draw on the sources you upload and citations are generated with the text. Limits scale by plan: the free plan caps PDF size at 25 MB and 150 pages, Plus raises that to 100 MB and 500 pages, and Pro allows 1,000 pages.
Full document export is behind Plus. It calls itself a research assistant, and its tooling follows that claim rather than general copywriting.
What stands out
Free tier
Academic
Citations
Where it costs you
The free plan allows only 10 AI autocompletes per day and 5 chat messages.
Plus caps usage monthly, and only Pro is unlimited.
Right for
Students and researchers drafting papers from their own PDF library
Wrong for
Marketers producing campaign copy or product descriptions at scale
United StatesFree plan; monthly and annual plans, published
Multilingual grammar checker whose core engine is open source
Ranked #8 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourcePublished pricingEurope
Support covers more than 30 languages, with browser add-ons, Office plugins and a proofreading API. The core repository is LGPL 2.1 licensed, and the vendor says users can set up their own server.
Premium adds unlimited paraphrasing, a style guide and 20,000 extra checks across English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese. A team plan adds a shared dictionary. Ownership by Learneo, a US company, matters to buyers who assumed it was an independent German vendor.
What stands out
Open source core
Free tier
Many languages
Where it costs you
It corrects and rephrases; it does not draft new long-form content.
Premium is sold over several billing intervals, so the effective monthly price depends on the term chosen.
Right for
Multilingual writers and teams who want a self-hostable proofreading engine
Wrong for
Anyone who wants an AI to write the first draft
GermanyFree tier; Premium subscription by billing interval
Sentence-level rewriter and summariser made by AI21 Labs
Ranked #9 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingMiddle East
Three published plans separate Basic, Advanced and Unlimited by daily rewrite quotas: 10, 30, then no limit. Advanced and Unlimited each start with a 3-day trial.
The tool sits beside the text you are writing, offering rewrites, tone changes and summaries, and a business tier adds SAML SSO and central billing. The vendor offers no refunds, only cancellation before the next billing cycle, so test during the trial rather than after.
What stands out
Free tier
Paraphrasing
AI21 Labs
Where it costs you
Basic allows only 10 rewrites and AI suggestions per day and 3 summaries per month.
The vendor states that it does not offer refunds.
Right for
Professionals polishing emails and reports one sentence at a time
Wrong for
Teams generating blog posts or product copy from a brief
IsraelFree plan; monthly and annual plans, published; 3-day trial
Marketing content platform with brand voice and agents, billed per seat
Ranked #10 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Jasper routes work across several models and layers marketing-specific knowledge on top. Pro starts with a 7-day trial and includes the Canvas editor, core agents and a small allowance of voices, knowledge assets and audiences.
Business lifts those to unlimited and adds API access, admin controls, custom agents and a grid for repeated content runs. The pricing page now also leads with search-visibility tracking, so the product has widened beyond drafting.
What stands out
Brand voice
Per-seat pricing
Marketing agents
Where it costs you
Pro limits you to two brand voices, five knowledge assets and three audiences.
API access and custom agents require the quoted Business plan.
Right for
In-house marketing teams that need consistent brand voice across channels
Wrong for
Solo writers who want a cheap drafting tool
United StatesPer seat per month, published; Business quoted; 7-day trial
Enterprise agent platform with governance, sold through a sales process
Ranked #11 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Starter gives a team of up to five a chat-and-automation agent, five playbooks, three scheduled routines and a single 50 GB knowledge graph. Enterprise lifts those limits and adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs, observability and the option to work with your preferred models.
The company positions it against chatbots by running multi-step work under governance rules. That makes it heavy for anyone who only wants help with a paragraph.
What stands out
Enterprise
Governance
Quoted price
Where it costs you
Starter caps use at five users, five playbooks and up to three active connectors.
The pricing page shows no amounts, so cost is only learned through sales or the trial.
Right for
Large organisations that need governed, auditable AI workflows across departments
Wrong for
Individuals or small teams after a simple writing assistant
United StatesQuoted per organisation; 14-day trial
Started as a copy generator, now a go-to-market workflow platform
Ranked #12 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
The pricing page lists Chat for small teams, then Growth, Expansion and Scale, which differ in seat count and monthly workflow credits. Chat offers access to OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini models with unlimited chat words.
Growth, Expansion and Scale are billed yearly in a single sum. The home page frames the product around workflows, tables and agents for GTM teams, so content creation is one use case among several.
What stands out
GTM workflows
Seat bundles
Workflow credits
Where it costs you
Larger tiers are billed annually in advance and run through an accounts team.
Workflow credits are a monthly pool, so heavy automation can outrun the plan.
Right for
Revenue teams automating prospecting and content workflows across several tools
Wrong for
Individual writers who only need drafts or rewrites
United StatesPer plan per month, published; annual billing on larger tiers
Writing assistant with a free plan, now part of Superhuman
Ranked #13 of 13 in Best AI Writing Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
The free plan covers spelling and grammar, tone reading and 100 AI prompts. Pro, offered with a free trial, adds full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, fluent English, unlimited suggestions, plagiarism and AI-text detection, and 2,000 prompts.
Enterprise adds proactive AI, custom roles, data loss prevention and customer-managed keys, and is sold through Superhuman Go. Its strength is breadth of placement, and its cost is that it sits inside a larger company's roadmap.
What stands out
Free tier
Browser everywhere
Superhuman
Where it costs you
Free includes 100 AI prompts, and Pro caps text generation at 2,000 prompts.
Terms and privacy contact now sit with Superhuman Platform Inc., so the vendor is a wider suite.
Right for
Employees and students who want corrections inside every app they type in
Wrong for
Teams wanting marketing copy planned and generated at volume
United StatesFree plan; Pro per month, published; Enterprise quoted
AI writing tools use language models to draft, rewrite, check or extend text inside an editor, covering grammar correction, paraphrasing, marketing copy, academic prose and long-form fiction. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
12 of the 13 tools here publish what they cost; the other 1 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: ProWritingAid, Novelcrafter, Rytr, Sudowrite, Squibler, Anyword, Jenni AI, LanguageTool, Wordtune, Jasper, Copy.ai, Grammarly.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 13 vendors are established in 5 countries across 4 regions (North America 8, Europe 3, Middle East 1, Elsewhere 1). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
03
Consider whether you want the source
1 of these are open source: LanguageTool. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
Credits, characters and seats: what AI writing tools actually meter
Every plan in this category meters something different, so headline prices do not compare. Sudowrite sells monthly credits that long drafting consumes quickly. Squibler gives 1,000 credits on its free plan and 10,000 on Plus, and only Pro is unlimited. Rytr caps the free plan at 10,000 characters a month. Wordtune counts rewrites per day, and Jenni AI counts autocompletes.
Jasper charges per seat, while Copy.ai bundles seats with a pool of workflow credits. Novelcrafter's cheaper tiers involve a model key you pay for separately. Each meter punishes a different habit: long drafts, many short edits, or many users. Estimate your own week of work in that unit before comparing any two invoices.
Write down whether you produce a few long documents or many short edits, then match it to the meter.
Ask what happens at the limit: a stop, a slowdown or an overage charge.
Check whether unused credits roll over; Sudowrite's top plan does for 12 months.
Editing existing text versus generating new text
Two different jobs share the label. ProWritingAid, LanguageTool, Grammarly and Wordtune work on text you have already written: they correct, rephrase and critique. Rytr, Anyword, Jasper and Squibler start from a prompt and produce a draft. A buyer who needs the second job and licenses the first finds the product has little to offer, and the reverse is equally common.
Editors also carry the lowest-risk pricing, since the free plans of ProWritingAid, Grammarly and Wordtune are working tools with defined limits. Generators meter output instead, so their cost grows with how much you ask them to write. Decide the job before looking at features, and trial the product on a document of your own length, in the language you actually write in.
Run the same unfinished draft through two products and compare what each changes.
Confirm the trial includes the generation features you plan to use.
Do not pay for a generator when your real need is proofreading.
Fiction, academic and marketing copy are different products
The category splits by genre faster than by feature list. Novelcrafter and Sudowrite are built around novels: a story bible, scene beats, voice matching and series continuity. Jenni AI is built around papers, with a PDF library and citation formatting. Anyword and Jasper are built around campaigns, with brand voices and predicted performance scores. Writer is built around governed workflows across a large organisation.
Using a fiction tool for ad copy, or a campaign tool for a manuscript, wastes the tooling you are paying for, and the interface will keep steering you towards the wrong job. Genre-specific products also have genre-specific limits: Jasper's Pro plan allows two brand voices, Jenni's free plan caps PDFs at 25 MB and 150 pages, and Novelcrafter's cheapest plan has no AI at all. Those ceilings only show up once you try the real workload.
Name the genre first, then shortlist only products built for it.
Check the limit that matters in that genre, such as voices, PDF pages or books.
Ask for a trial that unlocks the genre features, as Novelcrafter's does.
Who owns the writing assistant you rely on
Ownership changes the roadmap, and several well-known names here have changed shape. Grammarly's company renamed itself Superhuman in October 2025 after buying Coda and Superhuman Mail. LanguageTool looks like an independent German vendor, but its terms say Learneo, Inc. of Delaware owns and operates it.
Copy.ai and Writer have moved from writing help towards workflow and agent platforms, and Jasper's pricing page now leads with search-visibility tracking. ProWritingAid says it has taken no venture money. Read the terms page for the contracting entity, and re-check the pricing page near renewal. A tool that changed its purpose may still bill the plan you bought, so the feature you chose it for deserves a written confirmation at renewal, not an assumption.
Read the first paragraph of the terms to find the contracting company.
Compare the product pages with the pricing page; they sometimes describe different products.
Put a review date on the contract rather than assuming the roadmap stays still.
What goes wrong most often when buying AI writing tools software
Comparing a free plan's daily limit with a paid plan's monthly allowance as if they were the same unit.
Buying a proofreading tool such as Grammarly or LanguageTool and expecting it to draft a first version.
Assuming a product still serves writers because it started that way; Copy.ai and Writer now sell workflow platforms.
Choosing Novelcrafter's or another bring-your-own-key tier without budgeting for the model provider's separate bill.
07
Frequently asked questions
7 answers
What is the best AI writing tools in 2026?
ProWritingAid leads our ranking of 13. Orpheus Technology, the English company behind it, says it has taken no venture money and has no corporate shareholders, which makes it the least entangled vendor on this page.
The plan ladder is short and published, and a lifetime licence exists. The free plan caps rephrases and reports per day, and the product is built around editing a draft you already have, with fiction critique tools added to that.
Which AI writing tools publish their pricing?
12 of the 13, with the pricing model each one publishes:
ProWritingAid: Free plan; monthly, yearly or lifetime, published.
Novelcrafter: Per month by plan, published; 21-day trial.
Rytr: Free plan; monthly or yearly plans, published.
Sudowrite: Credit-based monthly plans, published; trial without card.
Squibler: Free plan; monthly or annual credit plans, published.
Anyword: Per month by plan, published; 7-day trial; Business and Enterprise quoted.
Jenni AI: Free plan; monthly and annual plans, published.
LanguageTool: Free tier; Premium subscription by billing interval.
Wordtune: Free plan; monthly and annual plans, published; 3-day trial.
Jasper: Per seat per month, published; Business quoted; 7-day trial.
Copy.ai: Per plan per month, published; annual billing on larger tiers.
Grammarly: Free plan; Pro per month, published; Enterprise quoted.
The other 1 quote per organisation.
Is there a free AI writing tool?
ProWritingAid, Rytr, Squibler, Jenni AI, LanguageTool, Wordtune, Grammarly offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these AI writing tool vendors established?
In 5 countries across 4 regions: North America 8, Europe 3, Middle East 1, Elsewhere 1.
ProWritingAid: United Kingdom.
Novelcrafter: Germany.
Rytr: United States.
Sudowrite: Not stated by the vendor.
Squibler: United States.
Anyword: United States.
Jenni AI: United States.
LanguageTool: Germany.
Wordtune: Israel.
Jasper: United States.
Writer: United States.
Copy.ai: United States.
Grammarly: United States.
Which AI writing tools are open source?
LanguageTool.
What should you use instead of ProWritingAid?
Novelcrafter and Rytr are the next two on this page. Novelcrafter is for Novelists and series writers who want control over which model they use; Rytr is for Freelancers and small shops producing captions, emails and meta text cheaply.
Who should not buy ProWritingAid?
Teams that need first drafts generated at volume. The free plan is capped per day, with 10 rephrases and 2 runs of each report..
If your AI writing tools product belongs among these 13, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
